DDB WIN NEW ZEALAND’S ONLY FILM BRONZE LION FOR VW ‘FINANCE DIRECTOR’

New Zealand only scored on Bronze Lion at the Film Lions on the closing night of the Cannes International Advertising Festival tonight, won by DDB for their VW ‘Finance Director’ spot.

The Aussies faired a bit better: GeorgePatterson Y&R, Melbourne won the only Film Gold Lion in Australasia with their stunning Schweppes ‘Burst’ spot.

JWTSydney scored a Silver Lion for Thrifty ‘Birthday Girl’, while ColmanRasic Carrasco Sydney won a Bronze Lion for MTV Asia Foundation’Different Lives’ as did Clemenger BBDO Melbourne for Carlton Draught’Skytroop’.

TheFilm competition was of particular interest this year because of theopening up of the category to internet and ‘other screen’ films such asmobile – 388 internet films were submitted this year and 77 in the“other screen” section.

And it was an internet film for the launchof the Halo3 console game for Xbox from McCann Worldgroup in SanFrancisco which landed one of two Grands Prix this year.

The otherwent to Fallon London for its popular ‘Gorilla’ spot for Cadbury.Australian expat Jury chairman and global creative boss of JWT, CraigDavis, said predictions that the Film category at Cannes was dying aslow death were wrong, predicting Film was “back in a big way” and that2008 was a “pioneering year”, partly because of the opening up to workin what is currently called the ‘B’ category of Film, or non-broadcastentries.

He said more Gold Lions were awarded this year because of the inclusion of internet films and the like into the Film category.

However, while praising McCann’s work on Halo3, some of the newer categories were uninspiring Davis said.

Muchof what was submitted in the Internet Film section was of high quality– the formats ranged from 3 minute virals like Halo3 to episodic longform TV-style shows like Dove’s ‘Onslaught’, the follow-up to its’Evolution’ campaign. But other categories like ‘interactive film’ hadno Lions awarded. “It’s pretty new,” Davis said. “The

[interactive TV] platform is a bit agricultural.”

Davisdefined the creation of new categories such as online and other “newscreen” films as part of the “push and pull” notion which definesbroadcast versus interactive media. The new screen entries were aboutbeing “pulled” or

“distributed” by admiring online users rather than the linear, “lean-back” nature of broadcast ads.

OtherJury members said they were pleased that entries this year in the newscreen categories were not full of YouTube style ads – one judge calledthem throwaway pieces – which suggested quality thinking and expertisestill had some merit online.

Australia’s tally count this year was a solid improvement on 2007 although well off the high in 2006 when seven Lions were won.

New Zealand won four Lions last year, its best since 2003, but none in 2008. NZ had four ads shortlisted this year.

Australian jury member, Ted Horton, partner in Big Red, said in many wins the Cadbury-Schweppes ‘Burst’spot is very similar to ‘Gorilla’. This is because both of them are anamazing demonstration of the pure essence of what the product is andyou can’t help but feel happy after watching them.

Horton said theissue of depth came up in the judging with the two Grand Prix’srepresenting opposite ends of the spectrum. “If you look at ‘Gorilla’or ‘Burst’ how much deeper do you need to go? With ‘Gorilla you’ve goneas deep as you need to go because the next thing is, ‘I’m going to havesome’.”

For Microsoft Xbox’s ‘Halo’, on the other hand, one advert might not do it, you need to go into it and become more involved.

“That’swhat makes it really difficult and I think if we’d just awarded ‘Halo’,then what we would have said was everything has to be deeper, when attimes Cadbury, just with one simple, classic, world-class commercialdid the job entirely,” he said.

The jury also recognised is that inmany ways ‘Halo’ and HBO’s ‘Voyeur’ is not breaking any rules, butplaying by the new rules extraordinarily well while ‘Gorilla’ broke allthe rules of that sort of advertising for that sort of category.

“So,in many ways ‘Gorilla’ could be perceived as more revolutionary thaneven ‘Halo’, which is just extraordinary. There will be some clientsyou just want to show the ‘Gorilla’ piece to say, look what you can do,there will be other clients where the ‘Gorilla’ will be useless, you’lljust want to take the ‘Halo’ piece and say, ‘look at what you can do,it’s extraordinary’.”